Eye Exam

I didn't want to push Kathleen's very well written birthday tribute to Rabbit down from the top of the blog, but I figured that people would want to know how Kellin's very intensive eye exam went today. Might as well give you the whole story.

The adventure started with a car trip up to Minneapolis, with just Kellin and I.  He does not travel real well.  Back that up, it started by him not being able to eat after 6am or drink after 9am.  Even further, the adventure started when Kellin decided to wake up at 4am.  So traveling alone in the car with a tired, hungry little boy.  Well it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Kellin of course fell asleep as I got off 94, 5 minutes before parking.  I was early, as I often am when only traveling with one instead of 4 children.  I decided to hang out and let him sleep for awhile.  Upon arriving at check-in, I got a receptionist who was obviously new, but that was the only issue I had with staff.  Everyone else was great.  We were brought into the hospital room(?) around noon, and they immediately took Kellin's vitals, which made him very upset.  It took a good half hour to get him to stop crying.  Clearly lack of sleep and sustenance was catching up with him.

After I calmed him down, we waited about an hour until they finally came to sedate him.  Usually parents are not allowed to attend, with good reason.  Given Kellin's situation though it was decided that I should be there with him.  That was the most gut-wrenching two verses of "Twinkle Twinkle" I ever sung.  I kept it together until he was out.

After waiting another 2 hours he was finally back with me.  He took his time waking up, did I mention he was originally up at 4 am?  Eventually we left with him never having woken up enough to eat.  Luckily he pretty much slept the whole way home.  At home he seemed back to his old self pretty much right away, which is good.

Now for the part you have been waiting for.  Kellin is not a good candidate for a cornea transplant.  The doctor basically said we could try, but it would be unlikely to improve his quality of life.  He said we would find ourselves "27 surgeries later wondering why we had done this." And we want everyone to know, we are completely ok with this.  We don't want any, "That's too bad." or "Maybe someday with better technology."  We never anticipated Kellin to have any vision, we are grateful that he has sensitivity to light.  I almost felt guilty bringing Kellin up to the doctors today.  I don't think he needs to be fixed, he is perfect the way he is.  It is good though to actually have the information about what is going on.  One thing the doctor did mention is that he is at risk of having increased pressure in his eyes and it should be monitored.